Why Are Humans Violent? The Psychological Reason We Hurt Each Other

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/visions/why-are-humans-violent-psychological-reason-we-hurt-each-other



From the crises in the Middle East to mass shootings in U.S. schools to the reckless striving for wealth and world domination, there is one overarching theme that almost never gets media coverage—the sense of insignificance that drives destructive acts. As a depth psychologist with many years of experience, I can say emphatically that the sense of being crushed, humiliated and existentially unimportant are the main factors behind so much that we call psychopathology.

Why would it not follow that the same factors are at play in social and cultural upheavals? The emerging science of “terror management theory” shows convincingly that when people feel unimportant they equate those feelings with dying—and they will do everything they can, including becoming extreme and destructive themselves to avoid that feeling.

The sense of insignificance and death anxiety have been shown to play a key role in everything from terrorism to mass shootings to extremist religious and political ideologies to obsessions with materialism and wealth. Just about all that is violent and corrupt in our world seems connected to it.

So before we rush to judgment about the basis of violence in our world, we would do well to heed the terror management theorists and consider missing pieces of the puzzle. Economic, ideological and biological explanations take us only so far in unpacking the bewildering phenomenon of slaughtering people in cold blood, or playing recklessly with their health, safety or livelihoods. Granted, some violence is defensive and perhaps necessary to protect the lives of sovereign individuals and states. But too often violence is provocative, and when it becomes so betrays a common thread of psychological destitution—the sense of insignificance, the sense of not counting, of helplessness, and of emotional devaluation. We have stories daily about both lone gunmen and soldiers who seek vengeance and “prestige” to cover over their cultural and emotional wounds. Correspondingly, such stories parallel the kind of psychopathy of some in the corporate sector who speculate, pollute and militarize at will.

[littlemissmartypants]

1. Interesting post . Thank you, xchrom.

This I will ponder: "psychological destitution—the sense of insignificance, the sense of not counting, of helplessness, and of emotional devaluation"

Hurt people, hurt people.

That is the only explanation I know.

Some people are harder to love than others.

The hardest to love are often the ones that need love the most.

I try.

Love, Peace and Shelter.
littlemissmartypants

[xchrom]

3. ...

[randome]

2. And why is it 'easy' to feel unimportant? Because there are too damned many of us.

It will not change until we stop breeding like mindless machines.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]The night is always young. It's never too late.[/center][/font][hr]

[PassingFair]

4. Testosterone nt

[PowerToThePeople]

5. I love your Dean Scream

His loss in '04 is what drove me to find other voices that thought the same as I did. It is what got me to this web site.

[PassingFair]

9. He was the only presidential candidate in my lifetime ...

That I felt really spoke for me. I wish he would run again.

[redqueen]

11. It is odd that the agent of the overwhelming majority of the violence is not named, isn't it?

Or then again no, it really isn't. Sadly.

"psychological destitution—the sense of insignificance, the sense of not counting, of helplessness, and of emotional devaluation"

It has been theorized that the fact that women give birth has led to the creation of the patriarchy, as a result of this phenomenon.

The patriarchal structure of society is at the root of so many problems. It'd sure be nice if we could stop tiptoeing around the central issue.

[Trillo]

6. I was just thinking about this in the context of compulsory education.

If you're a straight A student, I'm not sure if you'd absolutely feel insignificant or not, but relative feelings would be different. If you're a C or D student, I bet you would feel some insignificance, and to have to stay in such an environment under compulsion of law, would seem to create more feelings of something negative, though I'm not sure if it would be "insignificance" or some other feeling of inadequacy.

In some marginal populations, and in populations where violence is expected, such as military or law enforcement, does 'competitive' education play a part in creating more violence?

The article mentions psychopathy in the corporate sector, so here's a google search. It seems that some of the more famous folks, CEO types, often were not straight A students. I had read this many years ago in paperback book about very rich people, something from the 1970s, that the wealthiest among us were most often not the best performers in school, IIRC, they were often "C" students.

[LWolf]

7. The conclusion:

The range of violent upheaval in the world is alarming. The quick fix, militarist solutions to this problem are faltering. In many cases, they are making situations worse (as we have seen with recent military operations). The time for a change in societal consciousness is at hand. By focusing our resources on the root of the problem, the many people who feel they don’t count, we not only bolster individual and collective lives, we provide a model that others will find difficult to ignore.

This is a conversation that needs to happen on a large scale. Thanks for bringing it.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. Some humans. Most humans make it through life without resorting to violence.

Or, at least, without significant violence.

If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how? Joan Baez

[Laelth]

10. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[hifiguy]

12. Take a look at our close cousins the chimpanzees.

They are very territorial and often violent. We have not evolved nearly as far as we like to think, though certain parts of our evolutionary endowment can be overcome by the use of reason. Unfortunately reason seems to be in precious short supply throughout the world these days.

[JI7]

13. there shouldn't be a need to feel important or significant

[redqueen]

14. Kicking this and adding commentary from an excellent piece by Jackson Katz,

written in the wake of the Newtown massacre.

Many of us whose work touches on the subject of masculinity and violence have long been frustratedly by the failure of mainstream media -- and much of progressive media and the blogosphere as well -- to confront the gender issues at the heart of so many violent rampages like the one on December 14 in Connecticut.

My colleagues and I who do this type of work experience an unsettling dichotomy. In one part of our lives, we routinely have intense, in-depth discussions about men's emotional and relational struggles, and how the bravado about "rugged individualism" in American culture masks the deep yearning for connection that so many men feel, and how the absence or loss of that can quickly turn to pain, despair, and anger. In these discussions, we talk about violence as a gendered phenomenon: how, for example, men who batter their wives or girlfriends typically do so not because they have trigger tempers, but rather as a means to gain or maintain power and control over her, in a (misguided) attempt to get their needs met. We talk amongst ourselves about how so many boys and men in our society are conditioned to see violence as a solution to their problems, a resolution of their anxieties, or a means of exacting revenge against those they perceive as taking something from them. We share with each other news stories, websites and YouTube videos that demonstrate the connection between deeply ingrained cultural ideas about manhood and individual acts of violence that operationalize those ideas.

And then in the wake of repeated tragedies like Newtown, we turn on the TV and watch the same predictable conversations about guns and mental illness, with only an occasional mention that the overwhelming majority of these types of crimes are committed by men -- usually white men. Even when some brave soul dares to mention this crucial fact, it rarely prompts further discussion, as if no one wants to be called a "male-basher" for uttering the simple truth that men commit the vast majority of violence, and thus efforts to "prevent violence" -- if they're going to be more than minimally effective -- need to explore why.

...

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/2308522/

[hifiguy]

15. The cowboy/rugged individualist myth

has done more damage to this country over the decades than anything but the obscene concentration of wealth.